Prison / Jail slang -You Got Me Bang to Rights, Guv’nor

Be aware of what the people say! And interpret their slang so you feel, cool, and shit.

I get to hear and read a lot of slang in my line of work, so bear with me while I provide a guide to prison/ jail slang.

Snitch / Plant: One inmate trying to tell on another, in order to get a better plea deal. Advice to new inmates is often: be careful who you talk to, it could be a snitch.

Kite: a jail letter. This can be between inmates, or from an inmate to a department in the jail, or his or her attorney. If it’s a kite between inmates, its a tiny paper football, with tiny writing on it, that sometimes is “shot” between cells. Inmates also pass them to other inmates while they are walking to meals, etc.

If it’s a kite to a jail department, then it is usually about something the inmate needs to have done. For example “I kited a letter to accounting because I think they have my out date wrong. I should get credit for more good time.”

Out date: This is the date an inmate will be released. Inmates often write to their attorneys, the court, etc regarding their out dates.

Good time: No, this is not what the inmate did to get in jail. This is “credit” toward the out date. For example, a month in custody (with no incidents) usually results in 4 days “good time.”

Get a play, do a play: This means sell /buy some drugs.

Rillo, rello: These are the small cigars that party stores sell. Users often rip off the cigarello, and use the plastic tip that’s left to smoke a controlled substance.

On paper: This means on probation, or on parole. If you are on paper, don’t go posting facebook photos of yourself with money, guns, or drugs, as your PO will see that shit, and bust you for a PV.

Trusty/ trustees. These are the inmates who get to 1. wear more comfortable clothing and 2. do jobs in the jail. The jobs can earn them more credit sometimes, or commissary. Plus the inmate gets a little more freedom, can sometimes leave the facility, as long as they report back at the scheduled time.

Color code (not a slang term) There’s also a clothing color code that goes along with inmate status. Low-level inmates are usually in the bright orange/ teal. Trustees get comfy brown scrubs to wear instead, or even a plain white tee to wear with the scrub bottoms. If you’re being transported to court, you might have to wear the traditional “stripes” uniform. If you’ve been caught fighting, then you might go back to orange/ teal and be put in lockdown /solitary. Sometimes called “greens.”

Lockdown: This is what it sounds like: the section an inmate stays in is “locked down” due to an infraction. Lock down means no activities, no phone calls – for the whole section – until the lock down status is clear. Infractions can be something dumb, like toothpaste on the walls, messy cells, etc. Or it could be fighting, or contraband in the cells.

Chore Boy: Users put this in pipes to smoke crack with. It keeps the crack in one place. So when users are arrested, the search often reveals Chore Boy in the pockets, vehicle, etc.

Bond! This is something set at arraignment, depending on the case. Typical bonds are between $1,000 to 100,000 or more. $1,000 might be set for a simple (non-aggravated) assault case, while $100,000 or more might be set for a rape/ CSC charge. PR Bond means “personal recognizance,” or the defendant is not a flight risk, and needs only to show up at court. PR bonds can still have an amount attached to them, so if Defendant no-shows at court, then the cash has to be paid. 10% bond means that the bond is set at $5,000 but the defendant can get a bail bondsman to guarantee it, so the defendant only has to pay $500. C/S is short for Cash/surety – defendant has to put up the whole amount.

Usually bond has other conditions. For example, a defendant can submit to SCRAM, tether/ surveillance or GPS monitoring to make sure conditions are kept.

Bid: this is the term or sentence an inmate has. 5 year bid = 5 year sentence.

I’d rather learn to talk southern than jail slang, know what I mean? Back when I was a lot younger I’d have to check the Ft Hood Stockade solitary confinement when ever I had duty officer, look in at those doing their time alone and in solitude. It was really uncomfortable for me to be there, I never wanted to be a guest and certainly not in solitaire.

In 29 Palms there were horse stables – some officers brought their horses with them to this base. Apparently some zero complained that our singing while PTing past the stables was scaring the horses. Our proctor came up with this chant: “You can rape. kill. pillage and burn, but you can’t. scare. the horses.” This chant started as a whisper as we approached the stables and ended in full warface screaming as soon as we were just past. Always pushing it.

All y’all is usually a way for emphasis and carries the connotation of being combative. At least in my experience. There’s a warning there that says someone is close to a line, and that everyone participating is being marked both individually and as a group.

As the police investigation into the alleged attack against “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett continues, it was revealed Tuesday that in 2007 Smollett pleaded no contest to DUI, driving without a license and providing false information to law enforcement, the L.A. City Attorney’s office confirmed to NBC News.

He’s proven that he doesn’t give a shit about getting other people in trouble for what he’s done, and absolutely nothing about how they are handling his case in Chicago is standard procedure.

It is standard procedure for the connected in Chicago. These are the people that really don’t care if the plebes find out that the law is there to fuck over the little guy and their political enemies, not the connected..

My father-in-law kites letters to his state rep because he thinks it isn’t fair that he can earn up to 30% good time, but must also serve at least 85% of his sentence by state law. So his out date is already minimized even though he’s still got 3+ years left to serve before then. I think maybe he shouldn’t have stolen a bunch of money from his employer and lost it all trying to recoup his options trading losses.

Scary times in court: I went to watch another attorney’s preliminary exam in a gang-related shooting. There, I learned that if you’re going to be in the courtroom, and you’re in a gang – send a message to the defendant (from your own gang) who is a snitch. One does this by wearing super-dark sunglasses (harder for cops to make an ID later). Then stand up while the snitch is testifying, make your presence felt, and leave. That’s when I was glad that courts have metal detectors.

There, I learned that if you’re going to be in the courtroom, and you’re in a gang – send a message to the defendant (from your own gang) who is a snitch. One does this by wearing super-dark sunglasses

I spent a month in jail once, I remember everyone kept saying “eating like a fat rat” if someone was gluttonous and “be up in her guts” for engaging in PIV-shitlord-style sex. But I don’t think that was jail slang so much as white trash speak, although I imagine there’s a lot of overlap.

So a lot of times, I get cases where the defendant is hoping for a “county cap,” which is a 13 months sentence or less. Because anything over that is a transfer to the DOC. County caps make some good negotiations.

Never been in prison, but our senior drill instructor in boot camp used to talk about “stabbing guts” as slang for sex. “Boys, would you stop fucking up in drill so I can go home and stab some guts?” Always stuck with me because I never heard it from anywhere else and it was such an odd expression. He was a real Florida cracker from the rural central part of the state.

I had the Florida cracker as SDI, who was a tall, very lanky guy, and the green belt DIs were a little Mexican guy we nicknamed “The Mad Chihuahua” and a huge scary weightlifter-type Puerto Rican guy whose English was more than a little hard to understand.

Funny thing was looking up the huge scary guy later on Marine Online and discovering that he was a damned cook.

Our training company’s ops sgt was from Puerto Rico. He was funny talking (with a thick thick accent) about going through jump school not really speaking English, just following whatever everyone else was doing.

Never been in jail, toured several for college courses. Most interesting was a county jail where each floor of the jail housed offenders of different levels. We were on the top floor and classmate was looking into the holding area through a window. An inmate was hiding and jumped out in front of the window scaring her. The guards weren’t too happy with that they asked us to leave and locked down the floor. I’m curious what happened next.

Some of the most fervent supporters for impeaching Donald Trump are going silent.

Democratic lawmakers who have long sought to force Trump from office came to grips with a harsh new reality on Monday after special counsel Robert Mueller shuttered his investigation without a single charge against the president.

Rep. Maxine Waters of California has been one of the most vocal Democrats on the issue, demanding Trump’s impeachment since nearly the beginning of his presidency.

As chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, Waters has launched her own probe into Trump’s finances and business dealings with plans to look into potential wrongdoing at the Trump Foundation next.

But Waters adopted a notably restrained tone on Monday when responding to reporters about how the summary released over the weekend affects the political calculation around pursuing impeachment.

“I think we do nothing now but concentrate on getting the information, getting that report,” Waters said. “[Impeachment has] never been discussed as a strategy for this caucus. It’s only a few of us.”

Super Duper OT: So I finally asked my friend who got me into Libertarianism why he advocates for socialists polices and we discussed it on a Twitter thread. I basically said that the reason why I’m a Libertarian and still am is because the rights of the individual is paramount over the collective and any law that you advocate for means that you are willing to use government violence against your neighbor if they violate that law.

His response was: It’s not that I trust government any more than I used to, but I trust business far less than I did. It’s not wanting the state to do things for me, but wanting the state to stop doing shit for the rich & connected (or at least offset). The problem with libertarianism as it exists now is it’s neck-deep in class antagonism. 99% of the energy is focused on fighting stuff aimed at you and me, ignoring that 99% of the shit the government does is aimed at helping guys who make our annual salaries before lunch.

I then responded with: Friedman always said that the entities that are least favorable to the free enterprise system are large corporations. Large corporations by design have an incentive to use government power to stifle their competition. Where you and I differ is that corporations being able to do this is the result of the increase of government power which is an anathema to the concept of free enterprise.

His response: In the abstract, sure, but that’s assuming capitalism even resembles free enterprise. The government already has all the power, they’re already picking winners and losers. Try to name an industry that isn’t dominated by businesses getting preferential treatment.

I responded with: But then why give the government more power to reverse this trend? The government is able to do this because of the power we have allowed it to accumulate over the years. And by giving government this power we have a corporatist system.

His response: I don’t accept the premise that socialism would represent an increase in the government’s power – that’s the point. We’re already in a centrally managed economy, our government is at least as activist as socialist countries like Sweden or Germany. Difference is who they help.

My response: While I have no illusions about the nature of corporations, they don’t have the guns and legalized monopoly on violence. Government does which is why I’m all for limiting its power.

His response: You know I’m not bashing you when I say that’s naive (since I’ve said the same thing thousands of times). Look at which protestors get attacked by the police, the rationales used in overthrowing foreign governments, and who is filling our prisons. They have the guns. I’m saying a clean line of demarcation between government and business is not justified. We’ve been living in class warfare our whole lives, we just haven’t been defending ourselves.

Cronyism is as inevitable to a capitalist system as mass starvation and political executions are to a socialist system. I know which I prefer living in. The notion that it needs even be argued that the former is preferable to the latter is infuriating. Cronyism is a good problem to have relative to the alternatives.

“His response: I don’t accept the premise that socialism would represent an increase in the government’s power – that’s the point.”

Then he is truly a world class idiot. Socialism, especially the socialism peddled by the democratic party, is about giving government the ultimate power of picking winners & losers. They do this through onerous regulation and the creation of monopolies, not just stifling competition of any kind, but allowing them to never have to take direct blame for when they regulate some entity out of business. Not to mention, that government agents can kill anything in the private sector they want, and then, completely assume that function as something now done by government, by claiming that the private sector can’t do whatever they basically broke in the first place. And there would be zero recourse when they do this, because they will make it illegal for the private sector to ever compete with the shit they run.

Basically he’s still a libertarian, but is confusing free market capitalism with the corrupt cronyism that we currently have. The irony is that cronyism is empowered by big government; so his preferred solution to cronyism is actually throwing gasoline on a fire. He’s not a socialist, in reality he’s an fascist (in the classical sense).

It’s like people who give government credit for ending Jim Crow. I’m like “you know the government is the one that created Jim Crow laws in the first place”? Basically, as long as he shows up later to put out what’s left of it, it’s all good for a guy to set your house on fire.

You know… I don’t think you can claim it’s a bug when it only seems to keep causing you issues. 🙂

ChipsnSalsa
on March 28, 2019 at 2:19 pm

Well, it would happen to Gilmore to.

commodious spittoon
on March 28, 2019 at 2:20 pm

Yeah, it’s four fingers pointing back at me. I start a reply, reconsider, go do other stuff for a bit, then forget and here we are.

tarran
on March 28, 2019 at 2:13 pm

He refers to himself as a libertarian socialist and declared that he’s supporting Liz Warren for President.He refers to himself as a libertarian socialist and declared that he’s supporting Liz Warren for President.

I hope you explained to him that he can explain his political positions with many fewer syllables. His political philosophy is called “Fascist.”

so why not we use government power for the benefit of the average person?

that’s funny

tarran
on March 28, 2019 at 2:18 pm

It amaazes me that people don’t see that that’s not how it works.

Power and the power hungry find each other. And once the power hungry have the power to impose their will on people by force, the average person gets it good and hard.

The more powerful the state, the worse the life of the average guy.

AlexinCT
on March 28, 2019 at 2:20 pm

Because the last 100 plus years of history has not always played out with these ‘benevolent” governments hoping to fix things mass murdering and imprisoning people, right?

Shit, if there is one defining quality of any socialist system, it is that the people that peddle it all do so because they hate the established order and don’t want to play the game to climb that power structure, and instead prey on the stupidity of the envious masses to help them destroy the existing system so they can enact a new one with them at the top of the power pyramids.

It is not an accident that the first wave of those killed or sent to the camps consists of the people that didn’t believe in the revolution. Just like it is not a coincidence that the subsequent waves are the true believers that realize they have been had and have replaced a old group of masters with a new and far more horrible group of masters.

Fatty Bolger
on March 28, 2019 at 2:37 pm

And he calls you naive? LOL

R C Dean
on March 28, 2019 at 2:52 pm

so why not we use government power for the benefit of the average person?

Money and power always find each other.

His proposal requires a remaking of basic human nature. A New Libertarian Socialist Man, if you will.

Scruffy Nerfherder
on March 28, 2019 at 2:13 pm

Unfortunately it’s a real term that’s been around awhile, even if it appears nonsensical.

Everyone believes, despite evidence, that somehow law can be used to do good things. It’s like a bunch of people sitting around with a nuke. Each wants things, and there is this massive object sitting there with all the power in the world, so surely there is someway to use that power to get the good things? But when you try to use it it ends up destroying everything. It is just too powerful to be safely used.

I’d be stunned if there are not a lot of large development shops funneling money to the Fight for 15. Every time the minimum wage goes up, QSR* owners who wouldn’t even bother talking to IoT people before start beating on their doors.

For example, filtering the oil in the fryer is a shitty job. If you want your oil to last longer, you should filter every shift or so.

When minimum wage is low, you can a) hire an extra kid or two and hope one of them is actually conscientious or bored enough to filter like you told him to or b) just live with the fact that it won’t get done.

With a high minimum wage, you want to make that oil last longer because it is a big cost to you. So you really want to be sure to get the fryer filtered regularly. But you can’t afford to hire the extra manpower. So you hire some IoT asshole** to come in and put some sensors on the fryer and remotely monitor the fryer.

You pay for the IoT solution, but now you can get real monitoring on your store so you can do more with less people.

This is the epitome of a weak emotional rationale trumping logic and reason.

He is so mentally hobbled by his emotional connection to the envy that he feels towards those who are better off than himself that he lashes out in hopes of finding anyone who can and will hobble them so he can be more equal. This is not to say his criticism of the corporatism system we have and the economic inequality it breeds is without merit. He is absolutely correctly identifying problems that need solving in our society but all he can see is the symptoms so they are the only thing he thinks to attack. The emotions driving him make it impossible for him to see that the cure he is proposing is exactly the cause of the symptoms

That 4.5T budget is a helluva thing to waste on just any(every)one. You can buy a lot of friends and cronies with that kind of money.

AlexinCT
on March 28, 2019 at 2:00 pm

“His response was: It’s not that I trust government any more than I used to, but I trust business far less than I did.”

Yeah, this is idiotic. If a business is fucking you over you have the recourse of going to government so they can use force against the business to stop them (if you have a legit case). Who you gonna go to when government is fucking you over? Cause I can guarantee you one group in the government isn’t going to fuck another group. They are both gonna fuck you in a sammich for complaining.

He’s a good friend so I didn’t press for any more answers or engaged in a full throttled debate with him but I think this stems from his wife being a Progressive. She’s a really nice person but is absolutely clueless on how shit works on top of being passionate about progressive politics.

Also, he comes from an old money family, so I think there’s some guilt that he being a white male who comes from money is proof on how unfair society is towards those without his opportunities and luck.

I’ll talk about everything else with him, but I avoid talking politics with him not because he’s a jerk about it because he’s not. But because it’s disheartening to see the dude who introduced me to Ayn Rand and helped me really develop my political philosophy advocating for full on statism.

So, true story. I was working ambulance in Richmond, CA in the ’80s. We had a blonde haired, blue eyed intern riding with the paramedics. He had an English Major in addition to going through paramedic school.

So we’re sitting around the station one day when the medics get back from a call. Both of the medics were shaking their heads and the intern was pale and sheepish. It turns out when they got the scene, the intern asked what happened. A family member replied, “she dun fell out”. For me, that’s all I needed to know to get started. “She got high blood, she got a heart? What about eucalyptic seizures?”

This guy started in with, “well, what did she fall out of?”

“I’m tellin’ ya dude, she dun fell out!”

“Did she fall out of bed, a chair, what did she fall out of?”

“Just take her to the hospital.”

“Well, I need to determine what she fell out of first.”

At this point, homey pulls and a snub nosed .38 and yells, “I TOLD YOU TO TAKE HER TO THE MOTHER FUCKIN’ HOSPITAL!”.

Medics step in, “we got this”, load up momma and out the door.

Yeah, this guy later went to work in Oakland and got hooked on the morphine in the rig and then on to heroin.

“So, true story. I was working ambulance in Richmond, CA in the ’80s. We had a blonde haired, blue eyed intern riding with the paramedics. He had an English Major in addition to going through paramedic school.”

That immediately made me think of Raising Arizona:

Machine Shop Ear-Bender: So we were doin’ paramedical work in affiliation with the state highway system. Not actual practice, you understand. And me & Bill were patrolling down Nine Miles.

H.I.: Bill Roberts?

Machine Shop Ear-Bender: No, not that mother-scratcher. Bill Parker. Anyway, we’re approaching the wreck, and there’s this spherical object a restin’ in the highway. And it’s not a piece of the car.

my dumbass friend fell out on the beach in the middle of the day in Ft. Lauderdale. you know how hard it is to relax on the beach when your dumbass friend is unresponsive. dumbass. had to carry his ass off the beach to our friend’s condo. put him to bed. he recovered a few hours later. sucker missed the orgy. haha. what a dumbass.

So, I’m neither an attorney nor a PR professional, but the strategy being employed by Smollett’s legal team strikes me as, ah, less than wise. You pulled off your corrupt little bargain, you got your guy, who is obviously guilty as sin, off scot-free…..why are you still inflaming things with these statements? Why wouldn’t you just take the W and shut up? The more they keep poking this thing with these patently absurd comments, the angrier people get, and their client is still facing a potential federal charge for the fake hate mail.